Double solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (with Pär Strömberg), 2002
Left picture showing “We Have to Talk About It” , synchronized 2-channel video installation, 7.45 min
Right picture showing “OK” and “Madhouse (no copper roof)/Pure White Spirit” (all works 2002)
The vast desert in “We Have to Talk About It” acts as the crust of a brain, dried up from excessive drug consumption and the lack of love. This 2-channel video is a commemoration to a lost friend and it highlights my powerlessness in regards to his death. I use another comrade (Niklas Groop) and his profession as an archaeologist to excavate old memories for close examination. He thus becomes a tool to address the subject of our mutual friend’s suicide. We are looking for answers that we can’t possibly find.
Together with the endlessly looped “Chemical Warfare” (2001) it comprised the installation “Ask the Dust”. With its 3D-animated vultures circling a grey-slated sky, “Chemical Warfare” is like a hallucination that symbolizes the artificiality of drug abuse and the reality of its consequences. Each of the six computer-generated vultures represent people I know who have taken their own lives. Their ghosts now help to remind me of my own mortality.
Picture showing “Chemical Warfare” (2001), 3D-animation, 1.20 min loop (animator: Nico Knudsen)
